Bush might try to campaign as outsider, again

[Rose Siding]

This trial balloon is from a site with a horribly invasive registation. These snips just outline the strategy.

snip>
The peculiar scenario -- incumbent as outsider -- could play out as something of a subplot again this year as Bush campaign aides try to cast probable Democratic foe Sen. John Kerry as the kind of career Washington politician Americans tend not to put in the Oval Office.

Despite résumés that show Kerry with far more time in elected office than Bush, experts say a president can't run as an outsider.

"I don't think it makes any sense," said political scientist Linda Fowler, director of Dartmouth College's Rockefeller Center for public policy research.

Indeed, Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for the Bush campaign, says a president can't be an outsider. But, in a subtler form of the insider vs. outsider approach, Dowd is eager to paint Kerry as the worst kind of insider
snip>

While not exactly fitting the president for outsider's armor, Bush campaign media adviser Mark McKinnon sees "a lot of parallels" to the 1998 gubernatorial race in which an incumbent Bush could be positioned as more of an outsider than the challenger.

McKinnon said Bush "maintains an outsider's sensibility" toward Washington.

"And a lot of that comes from being from Texas," McKinnon said. "It comes from being a governor who worked in the states, outside of Washington."

It's a message McKinnon believes has legs.
snip>

"As that imploded," Dowd said of the Howard Dean candidacy, "and he became less electable, they went from New Coke to old Coke. They are back to the old standby Washington Democrat."

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/auto/epaper/editions/sunday/news_04f28223132571180016.html

[Homer12]

1. Bush should campaign as a bottom-feeding Carp.

[NoPasaran]

2. Does this remind anyone

Does this remind anyone of the story from the Onion a few weeks ago about Bush promising to restore peoples faith in government if elected?